Have you ever noticed that Politicians and their Policies are NEVER to blame?
A dispassionate reading of the history of the twentieth century indicates to me that there was no noteworthy disaster of the century that was not caused by or worsened by Government. Nor did that trend change with the turn of the twenty-first century. As a case in point take three recent disasters in California. The first was the near collapse of the Oroville Damn. Local residents and county governments insisted for years that lack of maintenance and a substandard secondary spillway were actively dangerous. State bureaucrats knew better and allowed the situation to fester until the worst very nearly happened.
More recent were the wild fires, first in Northern California’s Napa and Sonoma areas, and later in Southern California’s greater Los Angeles area. The villain, our political class would like us to believe, is the chimera known as Climate Change… Ed Driscoll writing at Instapundit has the skinny:
CATASTROPHE AND THE “CLIMATE CHANGE” CULPRIT:
California Governor Jerry Brown seized the opportunity last month to blame Climate Change for the “new normal” of rampant wildfires. With neighborhoods burning down and the fire inching closer to homes, Government and Science declared that a bogeyman of myopic mass humanity was at fault.
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Fire experts have long encouraged “prescribed burning” to minimize vegetation growth and, in the long run, reduce smoke pollution otherwise caused by out-of-control wildfires. Not surprisingly, however, environmental policies treat prescribed burn smoke as an “avoidable nuisance” subject to heavy regulation. The Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and other regulations impose onerous limits on our ability to prevent massive wildfires.
Even as we celebrate our valiant firemen, it is also legitimate to question whether our firefighting resources are effectively coordinated and whether triage decisions are made appropriately. Over the last month, a few friends sheepishly whispered in private, wondering why insufficient air resources were deployed over some fires while others received repeated rounds of tankers. They asked why the Skirball Fire (adjacent to swanky Bel-Air) somehow was quelled immediately in difficult terrain while the Thomas Fire (begun in rustic Ojai) became unstoppable in all directions. With Climate Change as the predetermined culprit, the media and an intimidated public pursue none of these questions.
Read the whole thing. In 2011, Victor Davis Hanson warned of “The Bloomberg Syndrome:” “Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.”
When it comes to California, embrace the healing power of “and.”
Indeed.
Anthropogenic Global Warming [AGW] Climate Change, is there NOTHING it cannot be blamed for? Apparently not.
The failure to actively manage the wild areas of the state to prevent or ameliorate massive wildfires lies at the feet of the Sierra Club and their political clients. That failure has led to billions in property losses and loss of life. Failure to adequately fund and stage fire fighting equipment, especially aerial tankers, greatly hindered efforts to fight the eminently predictable resultant fires.
